Good Morning Friends! Sometimes I get a dumb idea stuck in my head and can’t shake it loose. One of these recently is that I decided I wanted to pick up a commander tag. I’ve dipped my toes into trying to start groups in the group finder, and one challenge is the inability of someone without a Commander Tag to create groups larger than 10 players. Technically you can make strikes work but can do nothing to create subgroups and arrange people. Then there is the problem that technically a group without a commander means that anyone can tag up and effectively take control of your group away from you. I’ve heard anecdotes of folks going into the strikes section… merging groups and then telling everyone that they are now doing raids instead. Even if that does not happen… gating the ability to control a group properly behind a hefty price tag is not exactly great.
However, of my friend group, I am definitely the most “wealthy” because last year I hit the jackpot in opening a black lion crate and getting a permanent banker. Instead of keeping this, I opted to sell it and have been living on the proceeds ever since. So while 300 gold is a heck of a lot of money, it was something that I could afford and figured would definitely make group activities go a little bit more smoothly. The normal commander tag is pretty easy to get and I believe you can purchase it from a vendor in every major city. When you purchase the commander tag… you get a choice of one of these icons floating over your head.
I mean this is perfectly fine and functional… but would be the incorrect choice. There is however a semi-hidden system that allows you to get the “catmander” tag granting you access to these much better symbols floating over your head.
If I was going to spend 300 gold on something so frivolous, I was at a minimum going to get the arguably better version. So this began my quest and planted a seed in my head a few weeks back that I could not seemingly remove.
The problem with this mission however is that the Catmander requires you to do one of three jumping puzzles located in the World vs World borderlands. So not only do you have to be comfortable enough with WvW in general, but also be able to complete some of the most annoying jumping puzzles I have experienced thus far. The problem with these is that they are not so much jumping puzzles… but falling puzzles. The final leg of each of them involves falling gracefully from a perch and trying to land on a shelf below that will ultimately allow you to jump into the opening to the cave where the Catmander is located. After spending an entire afternoon making an untold number of tries, I stumbled upon the above video. Effectively I could use a druid staff ability to catapult myself to the ledge with the Catmander and skip the jumping puzzle entirely… or at least most of the hard bits.
Just like that, on my first attempt doing the above method… I landed on the ledge and made my way to the Catmander’s chamber. I ultimately went after the Blue Catmander, because the quirks of WvW meant that it was functionally easier for me to get to that chamber this week. Inside you are greeted with a delightful sight as the Catmander is obviously training some recruits… with kittens working on training dummies while a lieutenant cat supervises. This scene alone is worth the price of admission honestly.
One of the cute quirks of Guild Wars 2 is that you have a form of player housing called the “Home Instance”. This is used as part of the early story quests and is something that you can collect things for over the course of the game. One of the things you can collect is a series of cats that live in your instance with you. Effectively around the world are various cats and if you have a specific item in your inventory you will be given a prompt to interact with them and feed them that “food”. It seems that you can do this with the three Catmanders as well. The Blue one for example wants a Gift of Battle, aka something that you farm up for legendary weapons and is a rewards track in WvW. So of course I am now farming up another Gift of Battle so I can collect that cat. Thankfully the Yellow Catmander requests something more sensible and wants a Can of Spicy Meat Chili. That would leave only Penelope the Unconquerable in Armistice Bastion… but she resides at the end of a pretty traumatic jumping puzzle and that zone requires paid access so it might be a while before I collect that Catmander.
As much as I love World Boss Trains… I am uncertain if I am going to be finding myself leading them. It seems like a lot of effort, and while I applaud the commanders that go from zone to zone leading the troops… I figure I will probably keep my tag in my back pocket for when I need to arrange instanced content. I just feel like I am maybe not comfortable enough leading most content… that is other than Tequatl. I can do “Taco” in my sleep and have collected many spoons in the process. I guess if you find yourself in need of a commander for something, hit me up.
The post Mander of Catte appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Featuring: Ammosart, Ashgar, Belghast, Grace, Kodra, Tamrielo, and Thalen
Good Morning Folks! We start off the show with some random talk about Rick Astley and the history of Rickrolling. From there Bel talks about getting a Commander tag and going for the obvious best choice… that Catmander. Kodra talks about beating Axiom Verge and his struggles with M.A.S.S. Builder not quite being detailed enough. From there we talk about the launch of the Last Epoch Multiplayer patch and the struggles of instant 8X growth. We talk a bit about the challenge of a game launch and scaling servers without overbooking capacity. Then we finish out with some discussion from Tam about the Star Citizen 3.18 patch and its own server capacity issues.
Good Morning Friends! Yesterday was a pretty glorious day at least so far as I knocked out a bunch of things in Guild Wars 2. Sometimes I just stand around admiring the majesty of our Guild Hall from the rainbow bridge. There is this dumb side project I created which is using a bunch of the super adventure box clouds… to create a way up onto the rooftops… then Thalen branched off of this with the rainbow bridge. I heartily approve of this particular brand of nonsense… and honestly, I think Thalen and I may have been the only two people to have placed anything in our guild hall ever. I know I have Tequatl backbones for days if we want to build a pillow fort out of them. I have nothing better to do with those drops so I always deposit anything from world bosses in the decorations bank.
I know I talked about the noodle cart yesterday, but I thought I would bring it up again. I picked one up after experiencing it from a random player in Rata Sum, and last night while waiting on Tequatl I opted to throw mine out there. Notice how the player beside me has two players in their cart and I have two players in my cart, and a third player has also thrown theirs out beside me. Before the start of Tequatl, their noodle cart was full of people as well. I love objects that create casual social interaction like this. Often times folks chat away while sitting on the cart and these are so much better than the “Box of Fun” or the “Bobblehead Laboratory”. I would love to see them create more multi-person chairs like this that have a purpose behind them. It would probably even be cooler if eating the noodles actually gave you something like the birthday cake food buff.
So first accomplishment of the night is that I finally managed to catch the meta event in Seitung and collected that piece of the turtle saddle. I mean I had done this event several times before, but never when I was actively on the correct step on the achievement chain. I managed to catch someone doing a train and caught Echovald Wilds and Kaineng City as well. Not that I needed the other two, but it was a source of some pretty good loot. I have to admit that I have contemplated buying a commander tag many times. When there is one on the map, folks seem to automagically coalesce behind it. The problem is they also expect the commander to have a clue about what is going on, which I do not entirely yet. It does however seem to be a huge boon for actually doing any sort of activity though, so as I delve into making groups I feel like I probably need one.
Shortly after resetting, I decided to check the group finder tool and happened onto someone in Strike Training forming a group for Kaineng Overlook. I was legitimately working up the nerve to do the same thing, so I very happily joined their team. This was the last piece that I needed for the turtle mount, and within ten minutes we had filled our party of ten and shockingly had a pretty reasonable group balance. What is even more shocking is the fact that eight out of the ten of us had never been there before, and we somehow managed to one-shot the encounter without much in the way of training. What helped me specifically is that the markers and warnings used in the fight seem to be pretty standard from what I have seen in other games. There is a mechanic where it puts numbers over the top of your head, and we all spread out to the edges because this was something I had seen several times in Final Fantasy XIV as the boss attacks each of us in that order.
Just like that, I was able to go back to Arborstone and turn in my quest and get my very own turtle friend. In the grand scheme of things, this was a much easier quest chain than I needed for the Skyscale, but it did require actual group activity rather than largely being a solo activity. This means the only mount that I do not have currently is the Gryphon. I’ve started on it, but I guess will actually start devoting some real effort to getting it finished. When we were doing Kaineng City Blackout, the Commander was using the Gryphon and there was no way that I could keep up with them over Skyscale so I absolutely understand the specific use case for that mount. In truth, there is a pretty solid use case for every mount, and since the new meta in Gyala Delve requires a Siege Turtle at times… I figured I would get mine so that I could at least fill that role if none were available.
After getting my Siege Turtle I turned my eyes to my next objective of the night which was to finish out the Battle for Lion’s Arch and more specifically the Breachmaker portion of that quest. I boarded and defeated Scarlet and after a bit of back and forth finished Living World Season 1. I will say that already Living World Season 2 feels so much better than I remember it because I understand the events that led up to that point. I get why Kas is so guarded about letting Jory do anything because she almost died during the battle on top of the Breachmaker. I get why Taimi is so weird about Scarlet and seemingly obsessed with her, and I get why Braham and Rox are being a wet blanket about it. There is also the fact that I care about these characters way more than I did when I was first dipping my toes into this content having not seen much of the Living World Season 1. This is going to help massively for anyone starting out the game now without the wealth of years of experience and understanding of the lore.
I still do not love Dry Top, but apart from the quests I at least have Skyscale to move around it rapidly. I remember unlocking the zone the very first time and having to use the dumb Zepherite crystals. I get annoyed at having to continue to use them for mobility during the story quests, but those at least are limited in scope. I get that someone at ANet put a lot of work into creating those baubles and wanted to show the technology off… but it doesn’t make me like them anymore. I am going to try and burn through Living World Season 2 since I have seen it before so that I can start Heart of Thorns properly soon. My goal is still to play through all of the stories on the Ranger, but I have been cheating a bit when I see a group open in one of the Living World maps and using “Teleport to Friend” to get access to the zone without doing the story.
All told it was a great night and a great place to put Guild Wars 2 to bed for a bit. I know starting tonight I will be spending a lot of time playing the new Last Epoch Multiplayer patch, so it might be a bit before I check back into Tyria. I love my turtle so much and have started working on unlocking its masteries. It still floors me how much I love this game today after spending so much time frankly not understanding why anyone else did. There is part of me that wishes I could teleport back to the version of me that was in the alpha program all those years ago… and make him understand what was special about the game so that I could have experienced everything as the content rolled out. Then again if I could do that… I would probably be just as jaded as the folks who seem to dislike Gyala Delve so maybe it is better that I approached with relatively fresh eyes over the last few years.
The post Siege Turtle Get appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
Good Morning Friends! You ever have one of those nights where you spent the entire evening playing a single game… but also feel like you made no real progress in it? That was my night and I am not entirely certain what I have to show for it. I know I was playing from at least 6 pm CST onwards because I caught the early Tequatl at server reset, but I have no clue how to account for the rest of my evening. I know I teleported into a few zones to help with bounties for folks who posted a plea in the “Looking for Group” tool and added a few people to my friends list through doing that. I did not however get over my fear of posting my own groups and actually doing the strike that I needed to do. I think at some point I gave up on the notion of either miracle-ing my way into an existing group posting for what I needed or getting the fortitude to do it myself and moved on with other activities.
That meant going back to Lion’s Arch for what I knew would be the final conflict and Scarlet Briar sacking it. I say this without concern about spoilers because… it is sort of a known secret at this point. Even though many of us never experienced the Living World Season 1 content, we have been confronted that the Lion’s Arch or the Claw Island missions are not the same ones that we see today, and ultimately probably went to the wiki to find out why. I am an old enough player to remember both versions of the city fondly, and while there are folks who wish we could go back to old Lion’s Arch… I have to say I greatly prefer what is colloquially referred to as “Disney Lion’s Arch” because it makes a more usable hub city. Destruction of your main city is still one of the most daring moves I have ever seen a game make, and I am not entirely certain it was a good call for the longevity of the title. It created some bitterness in the players who were fond of it before and a lot of dissonance for the players that came later.
Essentially there are two copies of Lion’s Arch that you experience in the story. The first is as the attack has fallen upon the city and toxins are building up around you, while you attempt to rescue as many as you can. There is a miasma meter that ticks up over time, and you do whatever you can to save whoever you can in the process. I only made it so far as rescuing Evon Gnashblade and I think 30 citizens before the gunk claimed me and ended the mission. I am not sure if you can legitimately do all of the objectives that you have presented in front of you in the time you have available. What does not help this process is the fact that all of the enemies appear to be infinitely respawning. I learned this the hard way pretty quickly when I was carefully clearing everything before starting an escort, only to have it immediately respawn on top of me.
The second instance that you encounter is “retaking” Lion’s Arch after regrouping with the refugees in Gendarran Fields. The new map is essentially one big meta as you fight enough skirmishes in a region to get the boss to show up, and upon defeating the boss you take back control of that sector. For the purpose of my quest, I needed to do enough events to fill a bar similar to earlier steps in the Living World Season 1 content. I stuck around and helped out in trying to retake the city, and we failed miserably at fighting one of three legendary bosses that have a Red/Green/Blue resistance scheme. The one we were fighting was Blue and vulnerable to Red or Green… but I could not seem to get my team to go over to the green puddle and get the corresponding buff so we could actually finish the fight. We got close, however, for only having a half dozen or so people fighting it. We failed the instance though but did get more than far enough to finish my quest.
The Breachmaker is Scarlet Briar’s giant flying airship drill and you see it during the cutscenes upon zoning in during the attack on Lion’s Arch the first time. I got far enough in the quest chain that my next step is a story mission which is likely an attack on that Breachmaker itself. Last night when I got there I did not really have enough time to get engaged in anything that would potentially take that amount of time. The problem with Guild Wars 2 story sections is they are not really a predictable length and as a result, I need to make sure I have an hour or more before diving into them. A lot of them take considerably less time, but every so often there is one that will take a few hours to get through. Unlike FFXIV, this game is not exactly good about warning you.
Other than the Lion’s Arch nonsense, I encountered this contraption yesterday… and Arena.Net got another 600 gems out of me. This is the Noodle Cart Chair, and unlike most other chairs… up to 2 other players can join you and there is a button to press to eat noodles. This was me and another player sitting on the chair together in Rata Sum, and every time I have thrown mine out I’ve ended up with someone joining me. This is maybe one of the coolest cosmetic microtransactions I have seen because it adds something social to the experience. I mean I love noodles anyways, but this is just delightful and the animation of watching the jadetech making noodles, washing bowls, etc is just magical.
Another thing that I did yesterday was to spend some time fishing because I have been waiting around in Seitung lately hoping to catch someone doing that meta event. That is one of the two steps I have remaining for the turtle mount. So when I am not procrastinating about starting a strike group, I am idling in the zone hoping we end up with enough critical mass to complete the boss. It did give me a chance to play with another microtransaction that I picked up a while back. I love the octopus fishing pole and the way its tentacles move subtly as you idle between casting. Fishing in Guild Wars 2 is not necessarily the best system I have experienced, but it is far from the worst. Would that all games could have a fishing system as good as New World. It is enjoyable enough and I should really get more used to throwing my pole out while waiting around for Tequatl to spawn.
Tonight my plan is to try and knock out the last steps of the Lion’s Arch quest chain, and then move on to Living World Season 2. I will probably also try to keep tabs on both Strike groups and Seitung meta in order to hopefully catch one of those. I need to look up the event table for that zone so I know how often it fires. Tomorrow, however… will be all about the drop of the Last Epoch Multiplayer patch.
The post Lions Arch-Ish appeared first on Tales of the Aggronaut.
